Teaching students about their accomodations

I started teaching my son about his accomodations when he was in middle school. I wanted him to be an advocate for himself, as well as, know what he was working on as goals.

He is now a freshmen in high school, I think he does a nice job of being his own advocate. But, he is highly verbal and self-confident.

It depends on the child, if they can’t make eye contact with the teacher don’t expect them to say, “I need a small group.”

Shel

What grade?

It should be part of the infrastructure to make the accommodation happen - the “universal design” idea. So, while self-advocacy needs to be part of it, test accommodations shouldn’t have to be reinvented every test.

The way that works here at the college is that students get the documentation in and then when there’s a test they go down to the testing center and tell *them* that they need accommodations, and they take the test down there. (Whether or not they have to go to class on test day depends on whether other stuff will be covered that day; generally the appointment to take the test isn’t the same time as the class.)

WHat’s rotten is when a student essentially has to do raise his hand and say the emotional equivalent of “remember me, the retard? Yea, I need the test read to me again… give it to me so I can go down to Mrs. Brown, who’s probably doing soemthign else now, and have her try to read it to me while she’s monitoring five other resource students.”

My students don’t have their specially designed instruction re-evented at testing because I do use it everyday in the classroom. They however don’t know how to ask for it which is what they are supposed to do. I teach 4th/5th in a self-contained classroom.

I’ve always had a bit of difficulty with expecting kiddos to remember what I can’t (but I can’t… I hve difficulty with that too…)
Could you rehearse it & try to simulate how it would go in a regular classroom? So, before every test have an “accommodation routine?”

could you put some sort of sticy note up somewhere,maybe just one word to remind you, without it being something the whole class would be distracted by. Maybe a special cue word spoken to the kids?

Maybe teach their friends to help remind them?

Of, course I don’t know what you can do in a classroom without getting in trouble.

One of my main goals is for my students to know when they need to take a therapy break and to know what type of OT activity they need, and to get it done. Some days they do, some days they don’t….

It depends on the age of the kids, but if you teach self-contained, you can institute a program about disabilities and teach all the kids in your class a little about their disabilities in general and how it affects them in school and at work. It can be a forum to discuss and brainstorm solutions to problems that they have encountered with other kids, siblings, and in other classrooms. You can work in the accomodations in a check list that the kids can keep in their binders, so they have them on hand to refer to. We have a class once a week for our 5-7th graders. (all our students have LD). Why not do a self-advocacy thermometer for each kid? At the beginning or end of your session, ask the kids to rate their own self-advocacy and give an example of something proactive that they did for themselves. For example, if a student used a study guide or a strategy that they learned previously, or if they asked for help…

Good luck.
Fern